This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5-9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the…

This research proposes a new theory of direct causation and examines how this concept plays a key role in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. According to the "no-intervening-cause hypothesis," a causal chain can be described by a single-clause sentence and construed as a single event if there are no intervening causers…

We examine the time-course of semantic structure formation during real-time sentence comprehension. We do this through the lens of aspectual coercion, a semantic combinatorial operation that lacks morpho-syntactic reflections, yet is indispensable for sentence interpretation. We describe two experiments. Experiment 1 replicates the results of a…

The Korean orthography uses both alphabetic Hangul and logographic Hanja. Two experiments investigated semantic and phonological processing of words written in the two scripts. In the experiments, Korean readers had to respond to words either in a pure context with words from one single script or in a mixed context with words from the two scripts.…

The present study investigated the utility of employing computerized speech content analysis software to detect feigned depression in psychologically healthy adults. Twenty-two subjects between the ages of 19 and 54 years old, who scored lower than 10 on the Beck depression inventory (BDI, 1996), were asked to speak freely in response to a neutral…

This article presents an overview of current automatic sign recognition research. A review of recent studies, as well as on our own research, has identified several problem areas that hamper successful sign recognition by a computer. Some of these problems are shared with automatic speech recognition, whereas others seem to be unique to automatic…

In 3 experiments, affirmative and hypothetical probes were presented after narrative texts containing conditional arguments. According to the data, readers represented modus ponens deductions as certain, except when it was only a weakly necessary cause of a given effect. They represented any logically invalid inferences resulting from affirming…

In 2 experiments, a boundary technique was used with parafoveal previews that were identical to a target (e.g., sleet), a word orthographic neighbor (sweet), or an orthographically matched nonword (speet). In Experiment 1, low-frequency words in orthographic pairs were targets, and high-frequency words were previews. In Experiment 2, the roles…

It has been proposed that specific language impairment (SLI) is caused by an impairment of auditory processing, but it is unclear whether this problem affects temporal processing, frequency discrimination (FD), or both. Furthermore, there are few longitudinal studies in this area, making it hard to establish whether any deficit represents a…

The focus of this paper is the "culture of learning" in Chinese complementary schools. The term "culture" refers to the norms, attitudes, values and beliefs of the participants in these schools. Using data collected through multiple research methods from Chinese community schools in Britain, this paper takes a glimpse at cultural negotiation by…

Purpose: This purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical and semantic fast mapping ability of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL), with a specific emphasis on the influence of phonological factors. Method: The study included 46 children (mean age 58 months), half with SLI and half with NL.…

The authors present an overview of recent research conducted in the field of language production based on papers presented at the first edition of the International Workshop on Language Production (Marseille, France, September 2004). This article comprises two main parts. In the first part, consisting of three sections, the authors review the…

The hypothesis investigated is that children with a reading disability understand and use sound-spelling correspondence rules less frequently in spelling than children with other learning disabilities (arithmetic disability) and normally achieving children. Results showed that subtypes of learning-disabled children use spelling strategies that are…

This study focused on the relationship between school performance and performance on a dichotic listening (DL) task in dyslexic children. Dyslexia is associated with impaired phonological processing, related to functions in the left temporal lobe. DL is a frequently used task to assess functions of the left temporal lobe. Due to the predominance…

In this article we examine language processing and development in Catalan or Spanish-speaking children with SLI, focusing on the study of the verb. We analyse the key initial phase of its process of acquisition and aim to define common features of the SLI group that distinguish them from children with normal language development. We intend to…